Steve Jobs’ baby is set to make another conquest. South Korea is one of the two most advanced countries in the world when it comes to mobility and connectivity. Will the iPhone make an impact there? The iPhone will be distributed by KT, though SK Telecoms will be following suit. SK serves 50% of Korean mobile users.

“There are some pessimistic views over the marketability and profitability of the devices. Except for some ‘Apple maniacs,’ chances are low that the handsets will penetrate into the minds of general customers,” an official at SK Telecom said, Monday. (more…)

Back in October, the Kindle was launched for international customers in 100 countries, but ironically, one of their closest neighbors, Canada, was left out.

Well, today that’s finally changed. The Amazon Kindle is now also available for Canadians and will feature some local content such as The Globe and Mail and The National Post apart from their wide selection of international newspapers. Amazon was a little bit late in offering up the Kindle to those residing in Canada, but as they say, it’s better late than never. The Kindle is retailing for $259 or $275 in Canadian Dollars. Of course, feature-wise, it’s no match for the newer Barnes & Noble Nook e-ink reader, but with the Nook still on a pre-order status, the Kindle has the edge especially for customers who just can’t wait to get their hands on one.

[via bgr]

This is not the thinnest PMP we’ve featured but it’s pretty thin for a 720p player, especially if it functions well, and it looks like it would. The 3-inch LCD screen has a 400 x 240, not nearly good enough for 720p but you can connect it to a bigger screen with TV out. If China is serious about HD, and they’ve been busy churning out HD players this year, they should at least consider releasing higher-capacity flash players. The Newman A36HD is available in 4GB and 8GB. It plays RM, RMVB, AVI, and FLV videos.

[via akihabaranews]

Many users and reviewers have noticed (duh) that the Motorola Droid’s camera autofocus feature isn’t working properly. It just snaps out all of a sudden. Now, all of a sudden, the problem is gone. The crazy thing is, they must’ve sneaked in a bug fix. People are getting paranoid, except that maybe there’s no bug fix at all and the camera autofocus, well… it self-healed.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case as Dan Morrill of Google explained that it’s a timestamp issue on the Motorola smartphone’s autofocus routine and the problem will be back in the next cycle of 24.5 days. That’s how it long for the Droid’d autofocus to completely heal and it will remain healed until the next 24.5 days.More about the Motorola Droid autofocus problem at the link below.

[via mobilecrunch]

Just when you think everyone will be jumping on the Windows 7 bandwagon, we’re getting more reports than usual of devices running Windows XP. Here’s another one from DigitalRise. The PC-729 Tablet boasts a 7-inch touchscreen, WiFi, Bluetooth and an Arm9 processor. I’m quite concerned with the 480 x 272 resolution of the 7-inch touchscreen and the 128MB RAM. It makes the DigitalRise PC-729 a little anemic to me. The Tablet PC or Micro PC willset you back $355 at the link below.

[store]

You know a story’s big if it’s made it to CNN, and that’s exactly what the iPhone jailbreak front has managed to do.

The article mainly centers on the history of iphone jailbreaking and unlocking with George Hultz, or better known as master Geohot in the iPhone jailbreak community, as the focal character. It talks of how the jailbreak movement has grown and changed, the birth of Cydia courtesy of Jay Freeman (aka Saurik) to rival the App Store, and why Apple can’t legally put a stop to the jailbreak movement.

It’s a pretty interesting piece if you want to know more about the iPhone jailbreak front, and I strongly agree with the quote they got from JerseyBama of Soundoff:

“I’m convinced Steve Jobs is two people - one is a genius, the other is an idiot. If he had not locked the iPhone into AT&T, almost everyone would be using an iPhone today.”

For those who wan to unlock their iPhones, you can to try the blacksn0w iPhone unlock, the only unlock that works with iPhone 3.1.2 firmware complete with baseband 05.11.07. For jailbreaking, you can either use Geohot’s blackra1n iPhone jailbreak or the iPhone Dev Team’s iPhone 3.1.2 jailbreak.

Do be careful though as it’s been discovered that a juvenile Rick Astley iPhone worm and a more serious Privacy.A iPhone Worm are now floating around.

[via cnn]

According to this rather enlightening CNET article, netbooks are not to be compared with laptops. Rather, think of netbooks as smartphone with a bigger screen and a QWERTY keypad you can actually speed type on.

… students in K through 12 are accustomed to iPhone-size screens and performance. So moving to a Netbook is a big step up. From this perspective, the screens are large, the keyboards expansive, and the performance more than adequate.

Of course, many people already know that (the original contenders were iPhone and Asus Eee PC). I know a friend who said he would never buy a never because he had already bought an iPod Touch. But most people would say this, I don’t need a netbook, I have an iPod Touch (or an iPhone). No one ever said I don’t need an iPod Touch or an iPhone because I already have a netbook. Do you feel the same way?

[read]

The processor maker has jumped into the handset market with the unveiling (leaking) of their very own QWERTY MID. It’s slightly underpowered compared to the AMD Super Mobile CPU-powered xpPhone. I’m comparing it to the xpPhone because the VIA MID will also feature telephony. Indeed, the slideout QWERTY and the tall form factor suggests this can be handy for calling. The mobile unit can run both Windows XP and Google Android at the same time could swith between the two depending on the function you want.

[via clonedinchina]

Still don’t know what the Zii Egg is? Here’s the official description:

The Zii EGG is an energy efficient handheld StemCell Computer based on the powerful ZiiLABS ZMS-05 media-rich applications processor. Besides its multi-touch 3.5-inch LCD screen, it can also output HD video at up to 1080p. The ZMS-05’s 24 floating-point processors deliver up to 8 GFLOPS of raw processing power, while the StemCell Computing’s flexible architecture allows stunning display of 3D graphics on a small handheld battery powered device. Release to end user will be around the October time frame. (more…)

A PSP Go clone that goes for only $90? You can bet your knickers there’s going to be a catch. First of all, the clone is bigger, significantly bigger.

Second, the plastic just isn’t the same. The buttons on the PXP-2000 are clickety, the slide-out action lacking in snap. Screen resolution and screen size seem OK, but don’t bothre expecting a few pre-loaded 64-bit Nintendo games. Sure the makers of the PXP-2000 leave a lot to be desired in terms of construction but did TweeterMan287 actually notice the amount of pre-loaded games? And what about that surprisingly functional joystick? Read on for the video review (watch out for the guy in the hockey mask, he don’t read books).

[via engadget] (more…)